This music reminds me of large, empty and dusty stately homes where everything is covered in dustsheets and you wander about in the twilight, just aware of the ghosts of dancers past!

Okeanos (2023)for bass clarinet, cello and piano.
Performed by Mimitabu:
Heather Roche, bass clarinet
My Hellgren, cello
Jonas Olsson, piano

Live recording from Gamle Raadhus Scene, Oslo, Norway, 8 June, 2023.

Okeanos (2023) for bass clarinet, cello and piano [Mimitabu]

live improvisation on quarter tone bass flute and electronics

Carla Rees - Bass Flute (Kingma System)
Michael Oliva - Electronics

ImproMix

Music is made out of accumulation, and that which follows is tied to that which has come before. Afterness explores remembered, traced, stretched and altered musical fragments, that weave alongside fixed media created out of old sun damaged recordings of songs I wrote as a teenager, discovered on my Dad's obsolete Pocketmemo recorder. The piece explores the idea of memory being enacted on musical material in the form of transformations such as displacement,  interference and erosion. 

Recorded by LSO at LSO St Luke's, 14th January.
Colin Alexander cello
Heather Roche clarinet
Eva Zöllner accordion
Full Piece: https://youtu.be/39tp3G5vhCc?si=GUuLptCwCOGNPzVF

Afterness

String Quartet for Double Bass, Cello, Viola, Violin (Quartet Page Blanche). Live recording from the Deal Festival 2025. Supported by the Diaphonique Fund and Marchus Trust.

5. Esprit Submerge III

3. Esprit Submerge II

2. Esprit Submerge Intermezzo I

4. Esprit Submerge Intermezzo II

1. Esprit Submerge I

Kelvin snippet

In February 2012 students and schoolchildren in Valencia, Spain took to the streets to protest
brutal austerity cuts to schools imposed by a regional government rife with corruption scandals.
These students, who had, in some cases been wearing blankets in their classrooms because
the schools couldn’t afford heating, took to Xàtiva Street to voice their discontent only to be
brutally attacked by the police with batons, rubber bullets, and teargas. Originally for brass and
percussion, this ‘protest fanfare’ was originally premiered in the Palau de la Musica, Valencia in
front of an audience that included supporters of the police and austerity measures.

This version for orchestra is a complete reimagining of the piece and is written the London
Symphony Orchestra, who I had the pleasure of conducting on the occasion of the Nonclassical Label’s 20th anniversary. Thanks to Gabriel Prokofiev for producing this live recording mix from the orchestral premiere in 2024.

Photo credit: KAI FÖRSTERLING (EFE)

Xàtiva Street (extract)

Two movements from a performance of Olivier Messiaen's 'Quatuor pour la fin du temps' (1941) by Apartment House - Anton Lukoszevieze, cello, Mira Benjamin, violin, Heather Roche, clarinet, and Philip Thomas, piano. Apartment House's performance is unusual in avoiding dramatic phrasing and use of vibrato etc. It was released on CD alongside Linda Catlin Smith's composition 'Among the Tarnished Stars' (1998), for the same instrumentation.

extract from Olivier Messiaen's 'Quatuor pour la fin du temps' by Apartment House

rarescale is a flexible-instrumentation contemporary chamber music ensemble, which since its formation by Carla Rees in 2003 has gained an international reputation for its work promoting and creating new repertoire for alto and bass flute. 

The group performs regularly in the UK and abroad and has international links with several composers. Since its formation, rarescale has premiered several hundred new works, including many written specifically for the ensemble.

rarescale runs an annual masterclass course for composers and instrumentalists, and records for its own label, with five discs currently available. Many of the pieces composed for rarescale are published by Tetractys Publishing

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rarescale

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